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Welcome to World Ocean Radio…
I’m Peter Neill, Founder of the World Ocean Observatory.
I can remember as a child in my bed in a lake side house, many years ago, hearing the sound of the last fisherman, running home. I could look out through the screen, and sense the boat, the outboard, the course for dock or mooring, bluegills and perch in the bucket to be fried up for breakfast come morning. I can remember that experience myself, with my surrogate father, in his flat bottom skiff, old Evinrude straining but smooth, a harmonic ever recorded in my psyche from then to this day.
Running home. There is another picture recalled, taken from the deck of a house in Nova Scotia, looking out over Mahone Bay, wherein framed is a view of my son, in our boat, maybe for the first time, running home alone. And just last week that son sent me a video of his son, at the wheel of a rented fishing boat in the Florida Keys; it was twilight, with a calm evening sea, electric engine smooth, wake straight behind, running home.
These are memories derived from multi-generational, shared experience. The context is the key: on the water, fresh or salt, seemingly alone, truly in a time and place in Nature. The feeling is oceanic, wide and deep, and part not just of experience then and now, but significantly, as of a universal time and space.
What does it mean? Running home.
I speak often of the ocean as a place for solitude and solace. At the heart of such a place is the water -- be it the recreational beach or the farm pond or the big city hydrant or even the swampy hole in the middle of an urban slum – that’s always where the kids play, where there is a momentary of sense of freedom from all circumstance, where the water in your hair and on your skin becomes the stuff of joy and memory. Try it for yourself. Think now for a minute to remember your version of such a moment, when, after, whatever your circumstance, you went running home.
It is estimated that some 40% of the world population lives within 100 kilometers from a coast. Mostly the rest find settlement adjacent to other water sources – the oasis, the well, the riverside, the place that accumulates the rain or condenses the fog. Water lies at the heart and soul of everyone’s heart and soul. Those who live in the wild, in the desert, will know that water source or migrate until it’s found. That connection -- the girls with water jars balanced on their head, the bullocks making the well go round, the streamside mill, the giant reservoir, the vast water systems, contracts sometimes transcending national boundaries -- are all part of water as the essence of home, and the grace and gift of knowing it’s there for our return.
There is a cold rain outside my workspace today here in coastal Maine. I know the ocean is out there in the mist, just outside my view. That awareness wraps me, and my thoughts, in memory, of all the times and places where and when I have experienced running home.
We face confusing times – change and challenge that disturb our sense of self and security. What we must understand is that we are all bound up in water, that the ocean is everywhere, even inside our bodies, and that its presence is a healing force and a true course for sustenance and home.
We will discuss these issues, and more, in future editions of World Ocean Radio.
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